The Surface
by jacik
Summary: An AndroidSG-1 story. According to Harlan, when the last remaining Altairans discovered what they had been turned into, they simply walked out onto the planet's inhospitable surface and never returned. They felt it was a fate more tolerable than an indeterminate lifespan as mechanical copies. Now, Daniel fears that Jack may do the same…


The Surface

Fandom: Stargate SG-1  
Genre: Angst, Friendship  
Rating: T  
Setting: P3X-989/Altair, immediately after 2x19 "Tin Man" (This is an AndroidSG-1 story)  
POV: Daniel (mostly)  
Pairings: Daniel + Jack (not slash, although I suppose with the right goggles you can read pre-slash if you prefer.)  
Disclaimer: I don't own SG-1. I do own my own writing. I also own an unfortunate tendency towards writing nested sentences, I think.  
Acknowledgements: A really excellent AndroidSG-1 story called _Beyond the Darkness _by Moonshade gave me the idea for Sam's prototype in this story, which might or might not fit canon (I don't know, having not seen 4x21 "Double Jeopardy" yet.)  
Preface: According to Harlan, when the last remaining Altairans discovered what they had been turned into, they simply walked out onto the planet's inhospitable surface and never returned. They felt it was a fate more tolerable than an indeterminate lifespan as mechanical copies. Now, Daniel fears that Jack may do the same…

*******SG-1********

Daniel Jackson watched as SG-1 walked through the Gate. The blue, rippling event horizon seemed to pull towards him for a moment, then dissipated. They were gone. He turned toward Sam, who stood beside him; there wasn't much to say. Daniel—he would continue to call himself that, despite everything that had happened and despite what they had learned about what they had become—knew he would not be going home. Correction—P3X-989 _was_ their home.

Sam gave him a look that hid more than it shared. "We'd better get ourselves settled," she said. "Surely this station has to have its share of private bunk space. I, for one, am not sharing one of those petal things with you guys in my off hours for the foreseeable future."

Harlan, or the robot that went by that name, clapped his hands gently. "Females," he exclaimed joyously. "So practical! Yes, there are several charging stations. Normally they are only needed for repairs, since the energy emitters keep us running all the time, but you may use one for your private space if you like; and should you have need of a faster recharge, it is an excellent place to rest. Come, I'll show you."

Jack—his mechanical alternate, Daniel reminded himself—who had stared, silent and not taking his eyes off the Gate his flesh-and-blood double had stepped through, finally turned and gave Daniel a raised eyebrow. "Repairs?" he mouthed morosely.

Daniel shrugged back as they walked after Sam and Harlan. Even robot bodies must need some upkeep in eleven thousand years.

*******SG-1********

Jack had been true to his word to himself. Daniel, who had been initially worried about his friend's ability to adjust to a completely new life that had none of the things he had been dedicated to in it—career, family, serving his country—had been impressed with his resolve and rapid action. Burying the Stargate had not proven easy in a falling-apart station with limited resources. In the end, they had dismantled the ring and stowed the pieces, an effort which had taken most of a week to complete. In the meantime, Jack had remained purposeful but kept his own counsel; and Daniel, who was gregarious by nature and had always relied on the company of trusted friends—Jack among them—began to feel rather lonely.

Teal'c was his usual stoic, uncommunicative self (did it make sense to say 'usual' when they had really only existed for a few days? Daniel figured it did, subjectively) and Carter—well, she was a colleague, and he considered her a good friend, but she was also a woman, so things were often just a little awkward for him. Jack had been somebody he could talk man-to-man with, if not necessarily eye-to-eye. Their host, Harlan, was interesting enough, and Daniel had spent a number of hours shadowing him while he worked about the station, asking him questions, answering his own, discussing culture remembered from millennia before; however, even Daniel had to admit the man's obsequious personality was grating, and he understood why Jack had found him so immediately irritating. It would take time for the station's inhabitants to all become comfortable with each other, Daniel surmised. In the immediate present, Daniel just wished Jack would stop giving him the silent treatment.

As he walked along the damp cement corridor toward the room Sam had claimed as her quarters, Daniel pondered the possible reasons for Jack's avoidance of him. It might be that he held Daniel in some way responsible, he supposed, with a little surprise; after all, it was his job—no, the real Daniel Jackson's job—to quickly ascertain the meanings behind what people of different cultures might say or offer, and if he—the difference between what he and his template had done in the past was largely a semantic one, Daniel decided, since they shared all the experiences—maybe had listened more closely or understood some gesture or hint, perhaps none of this would have happened. Daniel shrugged at himself as he walked. He certainly wasn't going to beat himself up about it, but he had to admit to a certain feeling of responsibility for what had happened to them—for what had brought them into this strange existence.

Captain Carter, who had called him to her quarters earlier, rose from the sleeping shelf she was sitting on as he entered. He felt a moment of self-consciousness, even though Sam—real Sam, at least—had never shown a fraction of interest in him in _that_ way. His discomfort lessened as she held up an object. "I wanted to show you this without Harlan seeing it," she said.

"What is it?" he asked, turning it over in his hands, holding it too close and squinting at it. He was still unaccustomed to the idea that his robot body did not need glasses.

Sam looked a bit secretive. "It's a portable power cell," she said. "It should be compatible with our power matrices."

He sat down on the shelf-bed. "So we'll… what, be able to leave here?"

"I don't know, maybe someday," she said, shrugging. "Without access to my laboratory back at the SGC it's going to be difficult to build something that'll last more than a week. This is essentially just a basic lithium-ion battery."

Daniel set it down. "But it's rechargeable."

"Yeah, it will be."

"It'd get us through the Stargate."

"Jack took it apart, remember?" The hopeful look on Daniel's face pained her. "I don't think he's gonna change his mind."

Daniel raised an eyebrow and shrugged, hopping back off the shelf. "I assume you haven't told him about this yet."

Sam shook her head. "I won't until it's finished."

Daniel could see her reasoning. There was a possibility Jack would insist she stop, on the assumption that she intended to Gate travel. "I won't tell him," Daniel assured her.

*******SG-1********

"Where's Jack?" Daniel asked Teal'c, who was sitting in the main control room, working on a bent shutoff valve with a pair of pliers.

"I do not know, Daniel Jackson," he stated, serene as ever. If Harlan's attempt to rebuild him as a single mind instead of two had been interrupted early, the results had been indistinguishable, at least to Daniel, from the real Teal'c. Daniel had quickly found himself accepting Teal'c-Point-Two as if he'd known him for the last year.

"That's odd," Daniel said. "I thought he said he was going to be in here for a while, monitoring the steam system. Harlan made some modifications to it this morning."

"Harlan is always making these modifications," Teal'c stated without malice.

He had a point there.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "You're sure you have not seen him?"

"I have not," the Jaffa affirmed.

Daniel stepped out of the control room, shaking his head and worrying to himself. Jack—this Jack—had remained uncommunicative and uncharacteristically withdrawn since the Gate closure that cut them off from Earth and their lives at SGC. Daniel found himself unable to chalk this up to differences between Jack the Copy and Jack the Original; after all, he could find no obvious differences—besides the physical—between himself and the self he remembered being, the self on the other side of the Stargate. He shook his head at himself. He supposed some clever person would argue that there was no reference point for him to recognize such differences, if they existed, since he might be faulty in his own memories or be seeing them through the lens of his own experience. That was just it though—he had almost no experience of his own, and the experience he did have—that belonged to the real Daniel—told him that Jack was behaving deeply wrong. He'd heard stories about the colonel's behavior before the original Abydos mission. He hurried his steps faster, a cold shudder coming over him at the memory. Jack didn't always deal well with loss.

A rapid search of the main rooms and corridors of Harlan's narrow man-made world turned up nothing save the man himself. Harlan had hemmed and made non-answers until he cowed under Daniel's stern glare. "I fear…" he broke off in a self-deprecating shrug. "I saw him heading toward the north hallway." He shook his head in a rapid warning. "He is going like the others. You mustn't go after him. You must let him go."

Daniel had pushed past the old man-robot and hurried in that direction. The north corridor led only one place—out. Harlan had warned them of the dangers on the surface: the heat, the radiation, and most importantly, the lack of a power source. Well, at least Jack wasn't human; radiation damage might be repairable, but there was a real danger in running out of power before he could find him.

Daniel crawled up the ladder to the overhead surface hatch at the far end of the north tunnel. His hands felt sweaty as he worked at the latch mechanism. A wave of heat hit him as he slid the metal shielding back and poked his head out. The sky above was heavy with a uniform yellow-grey cloud cover, and the dirt below was the same steel-yellow that shimmered in the shimmering heat, fading into yellow-green smog in the distance. Daniel could see no signs of life—no plants, no buildings, just the dust and scattered rocks before the opening to the underground. (_What could wipe the surface of a world so clean?)_ Of course, his range of vision was shortened by the smog. There was no sign of Jack in the distance he could see. He pulled himself the rest of the way up the ladder and climbed out onto the barren world. A quick casting about him revealed a set of fresh footprints in the yellow dust going off into the distance behind him. Jack's?—he wasn't certain; the footprints matched his own, only slightly larger. Assuming Harlan had put similar boots on all of them… Daniel turned back to the hatch indecisively, then closed it. Jack might not have that much time. He took off in a sprint in the direction the footprints led.

*******SG-1********

If Daniel Jackson—this Daniel Jackson—had still been human, the hour or nearly two in the heat of the oppressive wasteland with no water and no rest would have rapidly exhausted his reserves. As it was, Daniel Jackson—the android—had found himself unusually unaffected by the heat, unencumbered by thirst or non-physicality, and only towards the end of those two hours had found himself unable to keep up his search at a run. It had been rather freeing, and he'd enjoyed the same moment of elation he'd felt when he discovered he could do complex math in his head. Harlan had promised he'd made them "better", and well, in some ways he had. Then the feeling of mild fatigue had set in, and Daniel had felt a twinge of concern as he recognized what he, Jack and Sam had failed to notice while back on Earth: signs that his electrical power reserves were becoming depleted. How long did he have left? He didn't remember—didn't know. He had to hope he had time to find Jack.

Daniel continued at a walking pace, his boots making parallel tracks beside the others in the grey-yellow dust that now billowed up around him as he stepped. A hot wind had begun to lift it, swirling it into shapes fantastic or menacing by turns; the flat landscape had given way to boulders, and Daniel thought, piles of rubble that must have once represented manmade structures. _(What could level a civilization so completely?)_ Up ahead, shimmering in the hot air, Daniel finally made out the colonel's form. He was walking slowly, head lowered slightly, feet methodically placed and raising the same cloud of dust that nearly obscured him.

"Jack!" Daniel hurried to catch up. O'Neill seemed to not hear him, or perhaps he was ignoring his voice. Daniel tried again when he reached him. "Hey, Jack—"

The colonel turned this time, stared at him, his dark eyes sullen and empty _(what could destroy a man so totally?)_ "Go away, Daniel," he said, resuming his pace.

"No, Jack, I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what this—" he gestured to mean the colonel's trek—"is about." He had stopped directly in front of O'Neill, forcing him to a stop.

The colonel started to push past him. "You know what it's about, Daniel," he said, dismissively.

"So, what, Jack?" the younger man stopped him with a grip on his shoulder. "You're just going to give up? You're just going to walk out there until you…" he cut off, waving a hand at the desolation in front of them.

Daniel didn't need to finish his question; both of them had been there when Harlan had described what had happened to the others, his fellow inhabitants of the underground station, people who had had survived this word's destruction only to have themselves converted to android bodies by Harlan's new technique. Harlan had explained how, to a man, they had eventually decided to leave the shelter of the underground tunnels. He hadn't needed to describe in much detail what would have happened to them after; without the station's recharging power, it was without question a suicide trek. Daniel wondered how much of their mechanical bodies might remain where they had fallen eleven thousand years before, at least initially exposed to this world's harsh elements, somewhere on its barren surface. Now, Jack seemed determined to follow that early example.

"Yes, Jack, I know what you're doing. I just don't understand why." His voice rose as he spoke, betraying his concern for the man he considered his friend.

"Why, Daniel?" Jack couldn't look at Daniel, and his voice was probably harsher than he intended. "I'm supposed to be happy living in a few tunnels so a guy I don't even like can keep his pointless cooling pumps running while my life—everything I've ever lived for or cared about—goes on without me? Because, guess what, it's not even my life." He turned, his voice straining with bitter anger, and shook Daniel Jackson loose from himself with a fistful of shirt collar. "There is nothing left for me to live for," he said, finally, meeting Daniel's gaze with a glare of his own.

"Do we—your friends—SG-1—mean nothing to you?" Daniel said, insistent, ignoring the hand that continued to grip his shirt threateningly. Jack—the old Jack O'Neill—had generally not carried through on threats of physical violence against him.

Jack pushed him away with a light shake. "Don't you understand," he said with a short laugh, "we're not SG-1. SG-1 is on the other side of that Gate. You're not Daniel Jackson, and I'm not Jack O'Neill, and everything and everyone I care about is back there, and I don't have a right to it because it belongs to _his_ life."

"Maybe we're not SG-1," Daniel persisted, doggedly, "but we're still the same people. I still know you, Jack, and the Jack O'Neill I know wouldn't give up on life—on his team—this easily."

Jack had been staring out at the dust and rubble; he turned back to Daniel. "What about Shar'e?" he asked, his question terse, soft, heavy with finality. The question cut like the knife the colonel would have known it wielded.

Daniel the Android, who was like Daniel Jackson in all ways save flesh and blood, caught the breath that seemed intent on choking him. Shar'e had been his will to live, his—well, the real Daniel Jackson's—reason for going on for all those months—the hope that someday he would find her and release her from the clutches of the Goauld. Jack's question held merit. "I don't want to give her up, Jack," he began, wildly, feeling out his answer from emotions he hadn't yet allowed himself to solidify into words. "Shar'e is everything, she's…" he broke off.

"You can't have her." Jack made the words an observation, but a cutting one. He seemed past caring whom his words hurt.

"Yes, Jack," the younger archeologist exclaimed. "Of course I can't have her. She belongs to _him_, and I have to let him keep searching for her." His voice strained the words.

"And that isn't eating you alive?" O'Neill sneered at him. "You're a colder man than I ever thought, Doctor Jackson," he said with deep irony. "Or whatever Harlan made that looks like Daniel Jackson. I don't recognize it." He turned and started to walk away again without a second look.

"It's tearing me into little tiny pieces, Jack!" Daniel Jackson's words, which were spoken, not shouted, not cried out after him, nonetheless stopped O'Neill in his tracks. They had sounded defeated_. But was Daniel's sense of defeat because of him?_ He turned back.

"How can you even think about going on here?"

Daniel's eyes, which were no longer masked by a pair of glasses he could fidget with and hide behind, were veiled and didn't hold Jack's sharp gaze. "I have to trust him," he said, finally, arms crossed in classic uncomfortable-Daniel pose. "He's me, you know… if anyone cares enough to never stop searching for her—" he shrugged. "I can trust him to do that. As for me… I still have my friends."

The answer, while unsatisfying, held genuine passion in it. Daniel looked up, and Jack felt the accusation uninflected in the words stab into him in the glance. Whatever they were—whatever this was he was talking to—it felt the same abandonment Daniel Jackson must have felt when he had left him behind on Nem's planet. Jack—the real Jack, but the promise held weight for him too—had promised himself he would never put the sensitive young archeologist through that again. As he looked at the familiar pain in his friend's eyes, the technical differences no longer seemed so significant. _Was he really going to put this Daniel through the horror of watching him die? Could he? Could he leave him behind again?_

Tears had sprung to the corners of the colonel's eyes, and Daniel, who had given up the idea that he might persuade his friend to change his mind, felt a sudden spring of hope. "Jack," he said slowly, an idea forming, "come back to the base with me. I want you to see something Sam's been working on."

"What?" O'Neill was working hard to hide his sudden flood of emotions, and the younger man's _non sequitor_ provided good cover. He swiped his dusty wrist across his eyes.

"She didn't want to show you until it was done, but she's working on a way for us to leave the underground tunnels, Jack. Go through the Stargate." Enthusiasm—or was it desperation?—with Daniel it could be hard to distinguish them—was creeping into Daniel's voice. "If it works we'll be able to explore—fight the Goauld."

_And be SG-1 again_, Jack added silently. "I'm sure I'm gonna love it, Daniel," Jack said, turning around. "Go on."

"What?" Daniel looked hesitant, unsure if Jack was again ordering him off.

"You're gonna show it to me, aren't you?" Jack smiled at his younger colleague. "Come on, Daniel. Let's go home."

*******SG-1********

They didn't talk much on the way back. Maybe because they had already talked about what there was to be said—maybe because they were men, and Jack, at least, admitted to himself he felt uncomfortable with the level of emotions that had been brought to view. Maybe simply because they had each given the other a lot to think about. From the distant expression that crossed Daniel Jackson's eyes from time to time, Jack wondered if he was still thinking about Shar'e, and he could have kicked himself for his earlier insensitivity. If so, the archeologist, who unlike Jack had rarely seemed hesitant to discuss topics with emotional import, uncharacteristically chose to refrain from sharing his thoughts, and Jack had to wonder if his actions had created a rift in trust which might take time to repair. Nonetheless, Jack respected the silence, and they walked side by side for some time saying nothing, until Daniel finally spoke.

"Jack, does the sun seem particularly hot to you?" he asked, abruptly.

"I don't know, I guess so," Jack said. "Why?"

"You're walking slower," Daniel observed. "And I think it is getting brighter. Harlan said the temperature reaches two hundred degrees up here when the sun is at zenith."

"I am a bit tired," Jack admitted, shrugging and picking up his pace.

Daniel kept up with him. "Jack, we don't get tired."

O'Neill looked at him. He was right, and they were still easily two miles out from the tunnel entrance. _When their power supplies failed_… he thought grimly. That had been what he'd planned on for himself, but… things had changed. Daniel had changed the situation.

"You've been out here longer than I have," Daniel observed. "I should be okay for at least that long." He squinted up at the burning sun. "If it comes down to it I can probably carry you."

The slight smile twisting the corner of Jackson's mouth gave an apologetic reminder of what they still were, regardless of Jack's decision to live; the original Daniel Jackson would never have been able to carry the colonel's rather solidly-built frame over that distance—but Jack found himself briefly thanking fate, and Harlan, for his new-old-friend's artificially enhanced strength.

"We'd still better hurry," Jack said.

*******SG-1********

The wind was rising, and the sun's heat scorched from overhead as the low entrance, little more than a cement block with a metal cover, shimmered into view in the distance. The tracks in the dust, which Daniel had been following for the past hour, alone save for the dead weight of the colonel on his shoulders, were beginning to blow over, and Daniel squinted into the heat to be certain he was headed in the correct direction. The access hatch was there, but it still looked so far away. He was beginning to feel the stronger effects of power exhaustion himself; _strange, because when they had shut down at the SGC, the effects of power loss had come on suddenly. Of course, there they had been resting, and paying little attention to their physical reserves… _It was becoming difficult to place one foot in front of the other. Jack had lasted no more than five minutes after Daniel had noticed him slowing. _If he collapsed before reaching the entrance to the underground…_ Daniel wondered how long it would take the still-increasing solar radiation to do them irreparable harm.

By the time Daniel reached the round hatch, the sky and dust around him was growing dark, and he fought to stay conscious as he lowered O'Neill to the ground and felt for the latch. Kneeling, he slid the metal cover aside, then, with effort, he heaved the colonel to the opening. "Sorry, Jack," he said, slurring his apology as he let the older man slide down the short ladder to the cold concrete below. His hands went limp as the colonel's uniform released from his grip, and the archeologist fell forward, his face and arms hanging over the edge of the tunnel as the world seemed to go black.

*******SG-1********

"Hey, kid, come on… wake up. You're almost there." Someone was shaking him lightly as Daniel's eyes fluttered, then eased open. He found himself looking up into the faces of Jack, Sam, and Teal'c. He grunted and tried to sit up.

"Hey. Hey, Daniel, easy," Sam—not the voice he had heard first; that had been Jack—said with a hand on his arm. "Don't try to get up, yet. You're not recharged."

"Okay." Daniel was confused; hadn't he just been out on the surface? "What happened?" he asked. He couldn't get up yet, even if he wanted to; in fact, he wasn't sure he could even lift an arm. He felt so drained, and apparently it was possible for an android to hurt all over.

Sam looked at Jack, who smiled and shrugged.

"You did it, Danny-boy. You got us back safely. Well, more-or-less safely, anyway. Sam found me at the end of the north tunnel pretty much as I was waking up, and you weren't hard to find since the hatch was open." Jack turned back to Sam. "Carter's got you hooked up to this new battery pack of hers; I guess it works." He actually sounded excited about it. Daniel felt indescribable relief wash over him; Jack was okay—he was himself again.

Sam nodded. "It's not finished yet, but the prototype's energy capacity is about fifty percent better than I expected." She lifted the small block-shaped object, which lay next to Daniel, and which trailed a couple of wires below as she held it up. "Your power cells were deep-discharged, and you weren't drawing recharge power from the emitter grid, so I've got you hooked up to this for the moment. It might take a couple hours of slow charging to reverse the effects, but then you should do fine with one of the recharge stations."

"I feel like a car battery," Daniel complained.

Sam smiled. "Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing. My dad always told me to use the charger in winter."

"Very funny."

"You kinda look like a car battery, too," Jack added.

"Sam's joke was funnier," Daniel informed him. He turned to Sam. "Thanks, Sam." Her invention had just saved his life.

Sam grinned. "You're welcome, Daniel," she said.

"It is good to see that you are safe," Teal'c added, his usual impassive expression lightened by a slight warmth in his eyes.

Daniel returned the Jaffa a little smile. Being surrounded by his friends, all of whom were safe and seemed happy again, filled him with contentment. Then he grimaced. "Am I… okay?" he asked, turning his head to give Sam a worried look. "I sort of… hurt… everywhere."

Sam nodded. "You're going to be fine," she said, glancing at Jack.

"You were kind of out in the sun too long," O'Neill added. "The solar radiation sort of… melted… a bunch of your circuitry. Harlan says the repairs won't be too difficult."

Daniel blinked. "Oh… kay." Even he knew their host had a propensity for portraying things in the best possible light.

Sam must have recognized the concern in his eyes, because she rested a hand on his forehead for a moment. "Don't worry, Daniel," she reassured him, "he's right. Harlan's been explaining the repairs to me and I'll be doing them myself. You were actually pretty lucky; none of your components were damaged beyond repair." She tousled the hair off his forehead fondly, then stepped back. "We should let you rest for now."

Teal'c nodded and he and Sam walked out of view.

Daniel let his eyes slide shut. He was tired, and resting was apparently his expected task for the next little while; he could do that.

"Hey, Danny-boy."

Okay, the colonel evidently hadn't stepped out with the others. "Yeah, Jack?" His eyes popped back open.

"Thanks for what you did," Jack said, sincerely.

Daniel closed his eyes again. It was actually hard to keep them open. "You know I had to, Jack. If I hadn't talked you into coming back…" He trailed off.

"Then you would have come after me, and tried to drag my sorry, powered-down ass back the whole way yourself, and maybe we'd both be dead up there," Jack finished. His tone spoke the regret he felt over what could have, but hadn't, happened. "Daniel," he said again, "thanks for showing me what I still have here."

A firm hand squeezed Daniel's shoulder.

"You're welcome, Jack," Daniel replied, eyes still closed. He didn't need to open them; he'd know his friend's strong grip—Human or android—any time.

*******SG-1********

Finis.

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing SG-1, so constructive reviews are appreciated! It's also unbeta'd because my beta-reader hasn't seen the relevant episode yet (I'll edit again and update after it gets beta'd, if necessary). There's quite a bit of angst but I tried not to let it go OOC. Let me know if you think this was a hit or a miss!


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